Factors in the length of stay of homeless families in temporary accommodation.

Data relating to 526 homeless families in temporary accommodation were collected in a study directed mainly to the examination of support networks of a sample of these families. The data, however, have allowed the authors to examine the effects of certain characteristics of these families on the average length of stay in temporary accommodation before they were housed permanently. Log-linear analysis was used to establish the independent effect of various attributes available from the data. In general the feature which seemed to influence the length of stay most was the time of the year when the family was admitted into temporary accommodation followed by the sort of reason the families gave for being homeless at the time of admission. Those who had been illegally evicted tended to take longer to be rehoused whilst those with rental or tenant difficulties took less time to be rehoused. The authors are then able to produce profiles based on this analysis of those families which are likely to stay longest in temporary accommodation as against those likely to stay the shortest time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]